MARGARET M. DAVIDSON (1787 – 1844)

A fiction writer, Margaret Davidson was the mother of Lucretia and the younger Margaret Davidson, both of whom were poets and died early consumptive deaths. The matriarch of a sickly family in New York state, she gave birth to nine children, seven of whom died young, and she herself suffered from recurring periods of illness. She encouraged and promoted her daughters' brief literary careers, educating her younger daughter at home and introducing her to writer Washington Irving. In his memorial of the younger Margaret, Irving wrote of the intimacy between the girl and her mother. Little information exists about Margaret Davidson's life beyond her role as the mother of two famous daughters whom she outlived. The anonymous author of the 1849 profile of her in Graham's Magazine, apparently faced with a lack of information, wrote: "The biographer conveys no more than a just idea of the loveliness of the picture here presented to view."

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